I have it, use it with p6 and I like it. It has it good points such as curves in modeling, great lighting such as hdri lighting, very crisp rendering.

I found it easy for me but I would advise you to try the demo first. It may not be to your liking. There are a couple of other alternatives depending on what your looking for. Vue and Carrara5. They import poser files very well too. They give you terrains for your images with great lighting and rendering but not the modeling capability as Shade does but shade doesn't have the terrains like the other 2. Carrara does have some modeling capability.

Like I said, it's best to try a bunch of demos before you spend any money and see what works well for you.

Just my opinion. Wish some told me that before I had bought some things.